Wreck of Australian World War I Submarine Found After 103 Years

During World War I, the Royal Australian Navy’s first submarine, AE1, was assigned to capture Germany's Pacific colonies. While the mission was a success, it turned tragic when AE1 and its crew disappeared—without a distress call—off the coast of Papua New Guinea on September 14, 1914. Now, following decades of mystery and multiple searches, AE1’s wreckage has finally been found, the Associated Press reports.

Furgro Equator, a Dutch survey vessel, located AE1 in mid-December as part of a search expedition funded partly by the Australian government. Submerged at nearly 1000 feet off the coast of Papua New Guinea's Duke of York Islands, the submarine is being treated as the grave site of its 35 crew members from Australia, England, and New Zealand.

According to a government press release, officials held a small memorial service for the deceased and are trying to contact their descendants. The Australian government will work together with the Papua New Guinean government to preserve the vessel’s wreckage and commemorate the tragedy.

As the first Allied submarine lost during World War I and the first ever lost by the Royal Australian Navy, AE1 holds a unique place in maritime history. It vanished just a day after the surrender of German New Guinea, but investigators ruled out enemy combat as an explanation for its disappearance; the only German ship nearby was a small survey boat.

Experts still don’t know what caused the vessel to sink. But because searchers at the time of its disappearance never found an oil slick, debris field, or bodies, experts assumed that the sub had struck a reef and sunk while remaining intact. While this theory hasn't been verified, the wreckage should provide more clues.

Civil War Cannonballs Found on South Carolina Beach in Aftermath of Hurricane Dorian

Hurricane Dorian skimmed the United States' East Coast last week, creating a trail of damage residents are still dealing with. But it wasn't just trash and debris the storm surges left behind: As WCSC reports, two cannonballs dating back to the Civil War were discovered on Folly Beach in South Carolina in the aftermath of the storm.

Aaron Lattin and his girlfriend Alba were walking on the beach on September 6 when they saw what looked like rocks nestled in the sand. As they examined them more closely, they realized they had found something much more special. The weathered objects were actually cannonballs that have likely been buried in the area for more than 150 years.

Incredibly, this isn't the first time Civil War cannonballs have been discovered on Folly Beach following a hurricane: In 2016, Hurricane Matthew unearthed 16 of them. Folly Island was used as a Union base a century and a half ago, and items leftover from the artillery battery built there are still scattered around the shoreline. The couple behind this latest discovery believes there are more waiting to be found.

Old cannonballs may look like cool artifacts to treasure hunters, but they should still be treated with caution. Police and bombs disposal technicians were called to the scene at Folly Beach to confirm the cannonballs were no longer functional.

A Lost Japanese Village Has Been Uncovered in the British Columbia Wilderness

In 2004, a retired forester reached out to Capilano University archaeology professor Bob Muckle about investigating what looked like the remnants of an old logging camp in the forests of British Columbia, Canada. North Shore Newsreports that each spring for the next 14 years, Muckle took his students there to help him excavate what he now believes was a sort-of-secret Japanese settlement.

The site is located on the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, about 12 miles northeast of Vancouver. It’s approximately the size of a football field and contains the remains of more than a dozen cabins, a bathhouse, a road made of cedar planks, and a cedar platform that may have been a shrine. Muckle and his students have also unearthed more than 1000 items, including sake and beer bottles from Japan, teapots, game pieces, medicine bottles, clocks, pocket watches, clothing buttons, coins, and hoards of ceramics.

Yet another media outlet is reporting on my archaeology project on a Japanese camp in Canada. This time its 'Smithsonian Magazine,' based on some communication with me last week and earlier reporting by @BrentRichter and @CBCNewshttps://t.co/KY6UUkp7gN

Japanese businessman Eikichi Kagetsu secured logging rights to the area near the camp around 1918, so it’s likely that the settlers were originally loggers and their families. Though the trees were cleared out by 1924 and Kagetsu continued his business ventures on Vancouver Island, there's evidence to suggest that some members of the logging community didn't leave right away.

Muckle believes that at least some of the 40 to 50 camp inhabitants chose to remain there, protected from rising racism in Canadian society, until 1942, when the Canadian government started moving Japanese immigrants to internment camps in the wake of the outbreak of World War II.

Muckle thinks the residents must have evacuated in a hurry since they left so many precious and personal items behind. “When people leave, usually they take all the good stuff with them,” he told North Shore News. His team even uncovered parts of an Eastman Kodak Bulls-Eye camera, a house key, and an expensive cook stove that someone had hidden behind a stump on the edge of the village. “They were probably smart enough to realize people might loot the site,” he added.

According to Smithsonian.com, Japanese immigrants had been victims of racism and discrimination in Canada since the first wave of immigration from Japan in 1877. They were generally met with hostility across the country, and kept from voting, entering the civil service, and working in law and other professions. Anti-Japan sentiment dramatically worsened after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and The Canadian Encyclopediaestimates that more than 90 percent of Japanese Canadians—many of them citizens by birth—were displaced during the war.

To Muckle, this all contributes to the likelihood that villagers would have chosen to stay insulated by the forest for as long as they could. “The impression that I get, generally speaking, is it would have been a nice life for these people,” he said. It wouldn't be the first time a remote, wild area served as a refuge for a persecuted community—farther south and east, escaped enslaved people settled in the swamplands bordering North Carolina and Virginia for the century leading up to the Civil War.

While Muckle believes people stayed in the Canadian camp until the 1940s, it's hard to prove—there are no records for the inhabitants of the camp or where they might have gone. If there’s evidence in the village that can prove residents did stay until the 1940s, it will soon fall to other curious archaeologists to find it: Muckle thinks this will be his last season at the site.

Or, maybe the smoking gun will be discovered by someone who isn’t an archaeologist at all. Here are 10 times ordinary people (and one badger) unearthed amazing archaeological finds.